Android UCI engine update: Fruit Reloaded 2.1 for x86

Long after i've shared the Android port of Fruit Reloaded of Fabien Letouzey HERE, my colleague Alex, a much better fisherman than myself, provided me with another x86 build of the reloaded. This means that owners of Intel based Android devices can now use FR at usual speeds. So, let's reload it.

Fabien Letouzey at WCCC2005

Download Fruit Reloaded 2.1 for x86: HERE

Android UCI engine update: Texel 1.06a48

Thanks to Alex for providing the links to the most recent alpha builds of Texel. Although it could not qualify for the second stage of TCEC-9, Texel is still one of the top engines available for Android.

Download Texel 1.06a48 for arm7: HERE
Download Texel 1.06a48 for arm8: HERE

Android UCI engine update: Texel 1.05 recent builds for arm7, arm8 & x86

Following a remark by Alex, i've wanted check what Texel builds were shared in Chesstroid. After comparing the only arm7 build shared with the package released on Google Play, i've noticed that my version had come before the official package and there is indeed a more recent arm7 build of 1.05, shorter in size, as well as other alternative ones for other processor achitectures. So, it's my duty to share them.

The previous build for arm7 i'd previously posted will still reside: HERE for the collector's taste.

In addition, below alternatives dated May 23rd, 2015 are made available in Chesstroid engine repository, which is intented to become the most complete Android archive ever shared on the web.

Texel 1.05 for arm7: HERE

Texel 1.05 for arm8: HERE

Texel 1.05 for x86: HERE

Texel 1.05 for x86 64 bit: HERE

Enjoy saving them somewhere and stay tuned for the newest 1.06 alphas coming soon.

Android UCI engine update: Sayuri 2016.06.29

Although all builds following 2016.04.09 didn't work on my devices, i continue to post each update by the author Hironori Ishibashi.

The latest version released by Hironori is dated 29th of June. I will appreciate to hear that it works well in your device.

Download Sayuri 2016.06.29 for arm5: HERE

New Android UCI engine: Gambit Fruit 1.0 beta 4bx

The customer is always right!

Indeed, i don't sell anything here and everything i share is FREE OF CHARGE FOREVER. However, that doesn't imply that i don't treat my collegues as customers. When they are right, they are right and they deserve the best.

I'd told there was no build of Gambit Fruit for Android in a previous post. It seems i was wrong and there used to exist one build available, somewhere, sometime, so far from me to detect.

Since there's no time for a complete root cause analysis to discover how and why i skipped the accurate information, the corrective action must take place first. What i can do is to share what's skipped but finally found.

Meanwhile, the Fruit family tree that i'd shared previously deserves now an update:

Download Gambit Fruit for arm7 (up to Kitkat only): HERE

Androids UCI engine oldies: Toga II 1.3.1

Fruit versions and derivative are countless. Another finding just comes bundled within a standalone Google Play app Chess Tactics and Strategy, the same way as Fruit 2.1 which i've posted here minutes ago.

Forgetting and skipping can be excused but ignoring can't. Therefore i recover the delay below, in the name of the collecting spirit!

Download Toga II 1.3.1 for arm7 for Lollipop and beyond: HERE
Download Toga II 1.3.1 for arm7 up to Kitkat: HERE

Android UCI engine oldies: Fruit 2.1

No matter how speculated are Stockfish and Komodo these days, it nothing compared to Fruit. Those who are old enough can easily recall how frequent Fruit had been subject to endless discussions about freely available source code and authenticity of new engines. Fruit, the first open source engine in history, had been the day zero of a new era in chess programming for sure.

I'd shared a lot of fruits in previous posts but one important build seems skipped. Thanks to my colleagues supporting this blog, i came aware of the existence of a build based on the genuine Fruit 2.1 bundled in an app unknown to me, Chess Tactics and Strategy (aka PbChess), available in GOOGLE PLAY.

It has nothing to do with Fruit Reloaded, another engine completely rewritten by the same author. Compiled for arm7 architecture, i think Fruit 2.1 must be a nice addition to the Android engines collection.

Download Fruit 2.1 PIE for arm7 : HERE

Download Fruit 2.1 noPIE for arm7 : HERE

Please note that noPIE (default up to Kitkat 4.4) will not run on Lollipop and beyond. In such case refer to PIE.

Android UCI engine update: Pawny 1.2

Following a request sent to the author Mincho Georgiev and thanks to the efforts by the Android community, we have come to the day where many builds based on the new version of Pawny are available.

After 20 tiny test games played on Exynos 4410 limited to 800 Mhz at 120+1 time controls, the first build prepared by Aart Bik has shown remarkable improvement over Pawny 1.0.

Pawny 1.2.AB.uci.arm5: 13.5 / 20 (+11 -4 =5)

Pawny 1.0.JA.uci2xb  :  6.5 / 20 (+4 -11 =5)

The self play gap is 127 ELO at blitz conditions. A nice start...

Shortly after Aart Bik's help, i have received other builds too from Alex. They are prepared by Mincho himself without any experience on Android. The good news is that they all work fine on Exynos 4412.

I don't know yet which version must be introduced to Rapidroid. I'm currently testing with self play blitz matches.

Now, the builds:
Pawny 1.2 AB for arm5: HERE
Pawny 1.2 MG for arm5 (*): HERE

* actually this one is built for arm V5TE which is in general the target used by everyone, on all builds i've shared until now. I've never seen a V5T build, so i don't share that one compiled by Mincho.

Pawny 1.2 MG for arm7: HERE

There's also an arm6 build available but it makes no sense while arm7 is available.

Android UCI engine oldies: Stockfish 1.8 and 1.9

Good news for the engine collectors who recently asked for the oldest builds of Stockfish: What's lost is found at last.

Hopefully, Aart Bik has come to help and kindly provided me with these ancient oldies. We are starting with 1.X today. I'll be sharing more soon, mostly earliest 2.X versions. Enjoy the past...

Stockfish 1.8 for arm7: HERE

Stockfish 1.9 for arm7: HERE

Android UCI engine updates: Sayuri 2016.06.04 to 2016.06.19

I'd already told that Sayuri will keep raining. So, it does. Ishibashi Hironori is updating his engine regularly in Github, although the improvements between versions are minimal, mostly invisible to Android.

I must notify that the last compile by Jim Ablett may still be stronger than the most recent one, due to the techniques he used to implement.

There are 5 builds released so far by the author in June-2016. As he overwrites the older one each time, that's my duty to save snaphots and share in my repository!

Here are the links to above mentioned daily (almost!) builds, all compiled for arm5:

Sayuri 2016.06.04

Sayuri 2016.06.08

Sayuri 2016.06.14

Sayuri 2016.06.15

Sayuri 2016.06.19

Note that none of these worked on my Note II. In contrast to 2016.04.09 which is still playing in Rapidroid, they fail to send PV's and moves to Chess for Android.

If you find that you are lucky than me and if they work well on your devices, tell me which build and which processor.

New Android UCI engine: Ethereal r745

Ethereal is an engine under regular development progress by Andrew Grant. According to its author, who hopefully started to compile for Android too starting from this release, Ethereal is capable of beating MicroMax and TSCP, which means it may reach 2000 ELO in Rapidroid.

Below remarks are taken from the author's description:

"Ethereal is a UCI compliant chess engine which uses a BitBoard board representation and an alpha beta pruning framework. Additionally, the engine uses the follow improvements to pruning, move ordering, and other time saving methods; Null move pruning, Razoring at pre-frontier and frontier nodes, Delta pruning in the quiescence search, Late move reductions in the main alpha beta algorithm, Null windows for principle variation searches, a transposition table, and finally, a killer move heuristic. This engine was originally developed to give myself a worthy opponent, but has since become a worthy opponent for other chess engines. This engine can compete with various engines in the lower rankings of the CCLR tier lists. Some of those results are noted at the bottom of this readme."

I'm planning to test Ethereal as soon as possible and add it to the ranking in next release, in case it works without problems.

Download Ethereal arm5 for Android: HERE

New Android XB engine: Minimardi 1.3 AB

In fact, it's not new at all. Minimardi used to be included in Aart Bik's early engine packages dated June-2013 !!!

Since i should have been mistaken about the protocol it uses, i had marked it disqualified because it could never be imported as a UCI engine.

Thanks to the user comments coming to blog, i recently woke up and tried again using XB protocol. And voila! It works perfectly on Exynos and Rockchip with 900+1 time control.

Minimardi is written by Juan Pablo Fernandez and the Android port will probably be very useful as a trustable build around 1500 ELO. I've already included it in Rapidroid.

Download and enjoy an engine you can beat yourself as human, very rare these days: HERE

Another version of Minimardi packed with a GUI is also available HERE on Google Play. However, the engine included seems to be v1.1, an earlier version. I never tried that one, so i don't know about it but in case it's a Java port and not a native code, it should perform much weaker than the XB engine.

Android UCI engine update: Stockfish dev't 2016.06.12

This is a build taken from Stockfish forum chat. I don't know who has done it but once loaded the ID showed 120616 which i assume to be correct. It seems the source is very recent but keep in mind that generating a good Android build needs many tricks and take the unknown with some caution.

Shortly said, i don't have enough info to guarantee that this mysterious build delivers more power than Peter Österlund's latest release. It's made for arm7 32-bit and may not work on Lollipop and Marshmallow. Try and see for yourself: HERE

New (?) Android UCI engine: APIL Chess 1.06

When i decided to get back to digging Jim Ablett's oldest builds, still hosted in Kyrill Kurikov's repository, i had very little hope of discovering anything unseen before. Well, a long time ago i'd navigated very deep all these folders and i should have collected anything available already.

But you never know. The hunt for the hidden treasures didn't yield a null result: 3 old builds to try should be better than nothing.

Out of three new engines found there, only one seemed to bu usable so far: Apil Chess 1.06. Two others, Cyrano and Sissa (another build was tested years ago without success) have failed to play engine games despite my efforts. They can be imported and seem to work but they exit suddenly during all games.

Regarding Apil Chess, it can barely play games but most of them require "post adjudications" due to frequent terminations before checkmate. 

In fact, below description of the engine is highly attractive at Chessprogramming Wiki:

"APIL chess (Asynchronous Process Interaction Library chess) is an open source distributed chess program for educational purposes and private use written by Ulf Lorenz and first published in July 2002. APILchess represents the board using a 16x12 mailbox array with 16-bit disjoint piece flag encoding, and piece-lists. There are traces (Hydra.h), that the Asynchronous Process Interaction Library was already used for early Hydra trials."

Reading Hydra between the lines made me excited too. However, the Android build can't play like Hydra, the cluster-monster engine which had beaten GM Michael Adams (ELO 2740) decisively in the last  human vs machine match played at tournament time controls without odds.

Windows build of the v1.05r1b is not different: Only 1464 ELO in CCRL 40/4.

After some 20 games vs Chess for Android native engine and Zzzzz, the Android build seems to play around 1400 ELO so far at shorter time controls.

I can't yet dare to introduce Apil into Rapidroid because of the adjudications which will probably bother me very much. We'll see.

For those who enjoy beating computers at chess, Apil 0.6 can be downloaded: HERE

Komodo 8 FREE for Android

Komodo team continues to convert old commercial versions to free status following each new release. Hats off for such good habit.

Now that Komodo 10 is released for Windows (unfortunately not yet for Android), Komodo 8 package becomes free for all. Yummy enough!

Since the said package comes with a bundled Android compile, you can have Komodo 8 running on your device for free. Yes, that's true.

To be sure, i've uninstalled my purchased copy of K8 on one of my devices, disconnected from Internet and installed the binary included in the zip package. After importing it into Chess for Android, the message "Licenced to Komodochess" along with the UCI options dialog boxes showed up.

Unlike the commercial version still available on Google Play, the bundled version has no OEX compatibility and you must install it on each GUI separately.

Everything is fine until here but i must notify the interested users about the bad news too: The bundled version is not as fast as the purchased version. It will reach lower nodes per seconds and it will play probably 15-20 ELO weaker.

Although anything free tastes better than the paid one, my recommendation stays the same: You'd better prefer the GooglePlay version of Komodo 9.42 or wait for Komodo 10 Android.

If you absolutely don't wanna pay: HERE is the link to the K8 package.

For the moment, i prefer not to create a mirror copy as their site will probably keep the package available for download during centuries!

Droidfish 1.61 with Stockfish 2016.05.28

In reply to a question asked in Talkchess forum, Peter Österlund shared recently a link to the development version of his wonderful GUI Droidfish. Actually i don't know much about what GUI improvements are featured but i guess most fans will rather appreciate the presence of the newest development version of Stockfish in this version.

I will soon share the engine compiles separately. However, if you already have Droidfish installed you may prefer to update it to the development version and upgrade Stockfish to the most recent build available for Android on-the-fly.

Meanwhile, this Stockfish build is supposed to be the strongest chess engine ever that you can run on your Android device. Now, enjoy the beast packed within Droidfish: HERE

Android UCI engine update: Stockfish dev't 2016.05.28

After three months Jim Ablett had compiled a development version of Stockfish, a new version is available thanks to Peter Österlund, the author of Droidfish GUI.

Since i've already posted about Droidfish release, the purpose of this post is the Stockfish engine which comes bundled in it.

The builds are dated 28th of May and they are probably the strongest Android builds you can install on your devices. Even though i can't be 100% sure about this without playing test gauntlets, i can rely on the common positive feedback coming from the computer chess community.

I've prepared two files with the builds taken from Droidfish, depending on the main architecture:

Stockfish 2016.05.28 for arm: HERE

Stockfish 2016.05.28 for x86: HERE

Bon appetit!